The field of the invention relates generally to porous membranes, and more particularly to expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE) membranes.
Porous ePTFE articles/membranes may be utilized in forming many useful articles, such as filters, fabrics, gaskets, and electrical insulation. These ePTFE articles may be produced by blending polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) resin with a lubricant, compressing the blended resin into a billet, extruding the billet into an extrudate, calendering the extrudate (if desired), stretching or expanding the extrudate in at least one direction, and optionally sintering the expanded extrudate to form the final article. The ePTFE article may be manufactured in any extruded shape, including sheets, tubes, rods or filaments.
The porous structure of known ePTFE articles is characterized by a plurality of nodes that are connected together by a plurality of fibrils. The nodes are essentially raw dispersion particles of PTFE material. The shape, size and orientation of the nodes and fibrils within the structure can be controlled by varying the expansion rate, expansion ratio, number of expansion axes and other processing parameters to yield many different structures.
Known ePTFE membranes usually are about 25 micrometers (μm) or less in thickness. In some applications it is desirable to employ thicker membranes for increased filtration efficiency. Usually, the increased thickness is achieved by layering ePTFE films by thermal of adhesive lamination. It would be desirable to manufacture increased thickness ePTFE membranes without employing the added steps of laminating several layers of ePTFE films together.